Date: October 15, 1692

"[Locke] will allow no idea innate but such as a man brings coined in his mind like a shilling."

— King, William (1650-1729)

Date: 1696

"Imagine two clocks or watches which agree perfectly ... Put now the soul and the body in place of these two clocks; their accordance may be brought about by one of these three ways."

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: May 16, 1699

"All others have a right to be followed as far as I, i.e. as far as the evidence of what they say convinces; and of that my own understanding alone must be judge for me, and nothing else."

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: 1699

"I justified my use of the word Spirit in that Sense from the Authorities of Cicero and Virgil, applying the Latin word Spiritus, from whence Spirit is derived, to the Soul as a thinking Thing, without excluding Materiality out of it. To which your Lordship replies,*That Cicero, in his Tusculan Q...

— Locke, John (1632-1704)

Date: March 16, 1696/7; 1708

"I fansy I pretty well guess what it is that some Men find mischievous in your 'Essay': 'Tis opening the Eyes of the Ignorant, and rectifying the Methods of Reasoning, which perhaps may undermine some received Errors, and so abridge the Empire of Darkness; wherein, though the Subject wander deplo...

— Molyneux, William (1656-1698)

Date: 1708, 1737, 1742

"Je ne suis nullement pour la tabula rasa de Aristote, & il y a quelque chose de solide dans ce que Platon appelloit le reminiscence."

— Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646-1716)

Date: 1708, 1714

"The Human Mind and Body are both of 'em naturally subject to Commotions: and as there are strange Ferments in the Blood, which in many Bodys occasion an extraordinary discharge; so in Reason too, there are heterogeneous Particles which must be thrown off by Fermentation."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1708, 1714

"They are certainly as ill Physicians in the Body-Politick, who wou'd needs be tampering with these mental Eruptions; and under the specious pretence of healing this Itch of Superstition, and saving Souls from the Contagion of Enthusiasm, shou'd set all Nature in an uproar, and turn a few innocen...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1708, 1714

"For the Bodys of the Prophets, in their State of Prophecy, being not in their own power, but (as they say themselves) mere passive Organs, actuated by an exterior Force, have nothing natural, or resembling real Life, in any of their Sounds or Motions: so that how aukardly soever a Puppet-Shew ma...

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)

Date: 1708, 1714

"For besides that our Reason, which knows the Cheat, will never rest thorowly satisfy'd on such a Bottom, but turn us often a-drift, and toss us in a Sea of Doubt and Perplexity."

— Cooper, Anthony Ashley, third earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713)